All,

I’ve typically been an early adopter of technology, and I must say I’m “stuck” at the IM/text message era (that would be circa 2005).  I see the attraction of the social networks, and it just seems to be yet another place to keep track of.  I base this observation on how my kids work their lives.  They tend to stay in one place (it’s still MySpace around here) along with their phones.  IM is out.  Email never really got started.  My perspective is how thinly spread am I willing to get?

Regards,

Mike

Hi Beth
Ive actually been on it for a while. Our CEO and a few others were relatively early enablers when it was opened to business.  Ive just started to actively use it recently.

I’m finding it pretty hard to separate work people, other friends that happen to be on it, and my kids and their friends. 

Its a bit odd to have my sons friends asking to “facebook” me and I havent come up with a way to compartmentalize that aspect. 

What amazed me was how viral this is and how quickly people in various aspects of my life found out I was on there. 

I think when I looked at it I felt it was more of a water cooler type of thing and not something we would use to actively communicate.  My sense is, at least for me, that there would be too much noise from all the interesting things you can add in (books, movies, etc).  Perhaps with a forward thinking group of clients and coworkers, you could build an interesting community for your company.  One that creates ties by socialization, but Id be concerned that the risks (read potential innocent but inappropriate comments) would out weigh the benefits.

Thanks for setting up a group, I was actually thinking of doing that.  Ill join up!

Beth,

Great insights - thanks for taking the time to share.

The real challenge with Facebook, MySpace, etc. relates to Social Networking the way it is currently defined/executed. Facebook largely supports an individual’s ‘social persona’ rather than catering for all personae ... business persona(e), cause persona(e), community interest persona(e), hobby persona(e), sports persona(e), parent persona, private persona(e) (eg., cancer survivor, however, I don’t want the world to know), etc ... the primary challenge is that you need to attach all such personae to an individual identity for this to work in the social network.

Facebook works well for the demographic utilizing their weekend / party persona ... and will slowly see adoption wider than this ... however enterprises are cautious. Limitations such as number of invites per day, privacy, security, ability to manage your own identity/persona are barriers, ability to manage groups effectively, etc. propose short term barriers to adoption ... no doubt will be solved though. The real test would be whether the PSVillage group would be prepared to migrate wholesale out of Yahoo Groups over to Facebook - would be interested in feedback / reaction of the group - assume we’d want to do more than ‘poke’ each other ...

Regards,

Andrew

This is a great discussion point as I just started a new venture with a couple of guys that will help bridge the understanding of social networks with “our” generation of folks who don’t quite get it yet.  We will provide a communication platform for social networks, blogs, or any website that you have control over (like PSVillage!); the key here is that email will be the communication vehicle.

We’re still in development with a launch hopefully in November.  You can sign up to be a beta-user or just receive updates by submitting your email at http://www.messagedance.com .

Geoff

Hi Terry,
Thanks for asking about Facebook.

Mostly, I am a fan of LinkedIn and really have not had a need to check out Facebook. Facebook has never seemed all that business-friendly to me either. On the other hand, LinkedIn has been a great resource for everything from hiring to getting advice on business issues. It doesn’t take a lot of time and I hear the opposite is true of Facebook.

The example provided would really not work for me or my team as we are always out and about and use our Blackberries to ensure “seamless mobility”. Mostly, it doesn’t matter where we are since we stay in touch via email and phone on the Blackberry. I would be interested to hear of other business uses of Facebook and happy to try it if it seems like there is real value there. But for now, I am unconvinced.

Thanks for asking!

Terry

I agree with your last member re: Facebook.  LinkedIn is one of the best sources for business networking of any kind and has many other
connections that facebook does not.

For example, there is a linkpoint with Plaxo, MSOutlook, Skype, MSN, and others with LinkedIn that allows you to keep your schedule and contacts (and personal info) in sync without doing anything technically. I don’t know about the rest of the members, but this is a challenge sometimes, particularly when everyone has one of these contact references.

I also think the user-friendliness of LinkedIn should be noted. You can search by company, name, distance, within your network, the linkedin network or web.

Ok, I’ll stop now...I’m starting to sound like a LinkedIn commercial.

Chip

Hi Terry,

It is interesting to see how many of the community have been experimenting with Facebook, and how I can relate to the experiences of so many here.
I too have been an avid user of Linkedin since its very early days, have found it to be an extremely valuable business networking tool.

The jury is still out on Facebook, and I am not sure just exactly where it fits.  It is useful to catch up on news of former colleagues, but more in a social rather than business sense. I will stick with it for a bit longer yet, but as I said, the jury is still out.

Cheers,

Kevin H.

Terry,

Thanks for fowarding ... Facebook and MySpace have cracked open a wedge of opportunity.  I believe the real applications will emerge over the next few years.  Privacy, control, trust and reputation are all going to be key if businesses / enterprise adoption is a goal.

Andrew N.

Terry,

I have to agree with Andrew. I don’t see much value from Facebook. I signed up for Facebook, just to check it out and wasn’t impressed. It doesn’t seem to have the type of functionality that LinkedIn has. It seems to be geared to the iPod generation more than business professional. I didn’t spend much time with it so it’s possible that I missed something. Maybe it will get better now that Microsoft is getting involved (http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20071025/tc_usatoday/microsoftbuysabitoffacebook).

For now I’ll stick with LinkedIn.

Regards,

Richard E.

Hi All,

We use Salesforce.com to manage prospects and opportunities across our small (10 people) community of senior consultants with a specific business development element to their role.

We are about to send out a newsletter, to probably about 400 people, and would like to have the features of an email marketing tool (unsubscribe, see who opened it, forwarded it on etc) but also have all of this stored in Salesforce so we can see and manage the information in one place.

Has anyone achieved this? Do any of the many hosted mailing systems integrate well with Salesforce.com?

Thanks in advance

Simon
PS - IMHO reference the Facebook debate - Facebook for fun, LinkedIn for work....

Simon C.

I don’t weigh in that often on this forum, but I would have to agree that I don’t think Facebook is really a good business tool. I use it primarily for personal stuff, and actually am on it quite a bit, but it does require monitoring to really be active.

Linked in is my primary business tool for keeping in touch with people from the business side of the world, and I actually have a lot more “friends” in that arena than I do in Facebook.

Eric S.

Chip, Eric, Kevin, Richard, Andrew, Beth et al,
This conversation is very enlightening!  I agree that LinkedIn is a very valuable business tool now, but it wasn’t when I signed up several years ago.  Perhaps Facebook will evolve in a similar manner.  Also, Facebook is encouraging programmers to develop plug ins that will give it more functionality.  Whether or not any of those plug-ins will be more appropriate in a social context rather than a business context is not yet clear.

For those of you who want to check out Facebook, PSVillager Beth Martinko has set up her profile and has said that anyone wanting to give it a test run can send her a “friend request”.  You’ll find me there and a few of our other members, but I have yet to give it a test drive.

For those of you who have not read the book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, and are interested in how social networking/collaboration will have implications in the business world, it is a great read. One of the things it discusses is that kids who are now graduating from college and going into the business world will be expecting a different kind of collaborative environment, based on what they have been exposed to growing up: MySpace, Facebook, IM, etc., and these experiences will have a tremendous impact on how business will be done in the future.  You can read more about the book at http://www.wikinomics.com/book/index.php

Best,

Terry

My $0.02 - New on Facebook, Veteran on Linkedin

Go ahead - add me !

I agree with the previous posts about Linkedin being a valuable tool for business networking - not only does it provide contacts with peers and prospects but the Q&A I find interesting and useful. Facebook seems more like a nesting spot - I can create a living room and invite my friends and acquaintances to see my stuff.

Not so sure I agree with the comment below re: the iPod generation vs.  Business Professional - I feel there is not a real distinction. I consider myself a Business Professional and am VERY plugged into the internet as a community (including my music/podcast collection). I find a HUGE value in Web 2.0 stuff, social networks, wiki’s, folksonomies, social bookmarking, and on and on. The value for me is not only from a user prospective but also from a business perspective. My company has developed a significant consulting practice creating web based properties that provide community oriented functions.

I do feel strongly that in order to “get” the value out of these tools you have to commit to being available to that world. Many people I know do not leverage these sites because sharing personal information, whether networks of contacts, or reading lists, or pictures, feels like too much exposure. To them I can only say - once you take the leap the return is immense and immediate.

Gary

I attended the NetSuite partner conference last week.  The keynote speaker was John Dvorak - technology writer for PCMagazine, Forbes, Barrons, Infoworld, etc.  Here are his top picks for social networking:
1.  Blogger for blogging (now owned by Google).  I have used Blogspot and like it a lot.
2. Twitter - alllows your to create an instant message mailing list and to broadcast to your IM network - great press about them from last week’s San Diego fires - used to broadcast evacuation notices to 1000’s.  Would be especially useful for college emergency alerts.
3.  Skype - very high quality, cheap international phone calls.
4.  Top search engines - Google, technorati, del.icio.us
5.  Best restaurant, hotel, etc. review site - YELP
6.  Best free anti spyware - free.grisoft.com
For Business Networking my favorites are Linked In and Plaxo but beware of the new Premium Plaxo service that allows you to synch your Yahoo!, Outlook and Linked in contact lists!  I didn’t have time to individually review all my contacts and ended up inviting my 85 year old mother and all my aging relatives to join my linked in network (plus 100’s of spammers who were automatically registered in my Yahoo! contacts!).  Linked in politely froze my account and shut down my ability to invite new connections.  I had to write a letter of apology and explain my Plaxo mistake to become reinstated. 

I have a Facebook and MySpace account to communicate with my teenagers but I find both too invasive for business networking. 

Jeanne U.

All,

Further to my comment, I offer the following.  This is not my comment, it’s from a blogger at InformationWeek.

Shovels As A Service In The Social Networking Gold Rush
For this week’s feature on Web 2.0 in the enterprise, we counted 17 startups that offer social networking platforms. Everyone knows that selling picks and shovels is the surest way to get rich during a gold rush, so these companies could be on to something—or at least, they would be if so many hadn’t come up with the same idea. The difference is that in keeping with the Web 2.0 fashion for online apps, most have set themselves up as Web-based service providers. Not so much selling shovels as renting them.
A service-based business model is great from the vendors’ (or service-providers’ point of view: It means they only need to make a sale once and can get paid over and over again. It’s even better when the marginal cost of actually providing the service is close to zero.
Most important during a gold rush, it expands the market, thanks to lower costs of entry. Renting is cheaper in the short term than buying, which attracts a lot more prospectors hoping to found a data mine. That means a lot more sites, all competing with each other and with traditional publishers for the same users and ad revenue.
In the long term, social networking is becoming a standard feature of most large Web sites, not an end in itself. I think this is behind Google’s relative lack of interest in the space, as well as Facebook’s API and push to become a host for third-party apps. On the intranet, where requirements are slightly different (assuming that intra-corporate social networking is useful at all, which it might not be), the startups face competition from bigger vendors such as IBM and BEA. It’s a feature, not a product.
Read the rest of my blog post and leave a comment.
Andy Dornan

The site has more than 64 million active users (including non-collegiate members) worldwide.[4] From September 2006 to September 2007 the site’s traffic ranking increased from 60th to 7th, according to Alexa.[5] It is the most popular website for uploading photos, with 14 million uploaded daily.